Hawaiian Music: The Ten Best Songs

By: Jill Engledow

Have you ever tried to figure out your favorite Hawaiian song? Practically impossible, if you ask me. How about the 10 best Hawaii songs? Still tough.

Anyone who loves Hawaiian music knows that the Hawaiian repertoire includes so many beautiful tunes, usually with equally beautiful words, that one's favorite is likely to change at any moment.

Like, for instance, at the moment when you cue up the next CD, or open the pages of a songbook and begin to play. The one you're listening to or singing right now is the best--or maybe it's the one you played last night, still echoing in your mind!

But what the heck -- let's give it a try.

One place to start might be the special issue that Honolulu Magazine put out in June 2007: The 50 Greatest Hawaii Songs.

Not surprisingly, the expert panelists the magazine chose to vote for the songs they felt represented the best in Hawaii music put Aloha Oe in first place. This is, after all, the one Hawaii song that people around the world are most likely to have heard. It's a song that raises "chicken skin" with its beauty and poignant words. The queen herself said it was a love song, but the rest of us think of it as a song of farewell and longing.

Their No. 2 choice was I'll Remember You, by Kui Lee -- another song of loving farewell and longing. In order, choices 3 through 10 were Honolulu City Lights, Hiilawe, Waikiki, Hawaii Aloha, Kuu Home o Kahaluu, Kaulana na Pua, Ke Kali Nei Au (The Hawaiian Wedding Song), and Morning Dew.

Now, those are all great songs. But I happen to favor the old-timers, particularly the Hawaiian language songs. In that list above, I'll Remember You, Honolulu City Lights, Waikiki and Kuu Home o Kahuluu are all hapa haole songs, with primarily English lyrics.

Not that I'm opposed to hapa haole songs; one of my favorites is Haole Hula, which so eloquently expresses the yearning to share Hawaii's beauty.

And when I asked my ukulele class buddies for their favorite songs, they listed Hanalei By Moonlight, White Sandy Beach and Honolulu I Am Coming Back Again. I'm always happy to hear any of those songs, and only politeness in a crowd will stop me from singing along any time they're played.

But those old Hawaiian songwriters created melodies that still sound beautiful today, with words that seem to wind around each other like strands of pikake and maile in a lovely, fragrant lei.

When I look through my songbooks, and think about the songs that stick in my head, I remember the great Charles E. King, a composer of a century ago, who created songs like Lei Aloha Lei Makamae, Eleu Mikimiki and Lei Ilima.

Or how about Helen Desha Beamer, composer of a long list of songs that include Keawaiki, Kawohikukapulani and the Kimo Hula? Or what about David Nape's Kuu Home, more commonly known as Old Plantation?

I'm just getting started here! It's hard to say that any 10 songs are the best when it comes to Hawaiian music, never mind a single song. Ever since the missionaries brought western style melodies to combine with the Hawaiians' poetic language and inborn musical talent, these islands have been producing great sounds.

Along with all the good old songs, we now have an outpouring of new talent producing great new songs in Hawaiian and in English.

No question about it. It's just going to get harder to choose "the best" when it comes to Hawaiian music. We might as well simply enjoy it and be grateful that Hawaiian musicians have produced, and continue to produce, so many wonderful songs.

As for me, right this moment? My number one song today, the one that keeps running through my head, is Lena Machado's 1946 Kaulana `O Hilo Hanakahi. The line that keeps coming back to me is "O ka nani ia `o ka nani ia": It is beautiful, so very beautiful. Somehow that seems the most appropriate line to be singing as I contemplate the best of Hawaiian music.

Article Source: http://www.myhotarticles.com

Learn more from award-winning Hawaii author Jill Engledow about the history of Hawaii and Hawaiian music at her website, www.islandlife101.com.

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